The 2010 JoyHog Holiday Gift Guide: Kiss the Cook

This is the season when the best and the brightest of the cookbooks come out, making gift-giving an almost insurmountable task for all the foodies we have in our lives. Here are some of our picks for the tastiest morsels that you will, quite frankly, just want to keep for yourself.

Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented

A lot of baker-folk try and put a new spin on the classics and make it their own, but Lewis and Poliafito are the real deal. The pair have two BAKED shops going – the original in Red Hook, Brooklyn and the other in Charlestown, SC. The pages of their second cookbook, “Baked Explorations” feel like a stroll through the kitchen in the ACE Hotel while affixing ones bowler hat and monocle and nibbling on a warm muffin. Recipes that we are going rather insane over include: Black and White Cookies (their hunt for the perfect version was a two year obsessive quest), Whiskey Pear Tart, Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars and Farm Stand Buttermilk Doughnuts. Clear the kitchen, people!

The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook

Here’s one to appease that wintery Grandma gene in the cooks out there. The time for canning and jamming is upon us, and if you’ve never been one for such feats then this book may change your tune, especially once you see the exquisitely mouth-watering photographs by Sara Remington. Some of the sticky delights herein include: Lemon & Pink Grapefruit Marmalade, Concord Grape Jam, Cranberry-Pomegranate Marmalade, Olallieberry Jam (we don’t know what that is, but it’s “strikingly vivid”) and more. Your inner-Paddington Bear will want you to have this one.

Bon Appétit Desserts

From the editor-in-chief of one of the best cooking publications around comes this huge new volume of dessert recipes with step-by-step tutorials for both seasoned and novice bakers. In 680 pages, there are 600 recipes with 50 full-colour photographs. Some tasty treats you’ll notice include: Raspberry-Whipped Cream Truffle Cake, Tiramisù Wedding Cake with Mixed Berries, Maple Gingerbread Soufflé and Orange and Rosemary Butter Blossom Cookies. You’d best stock up on the butter, kids.

Chili Lovers Gift Set

Hand-crafted tasty Italian nublets! Nudo is perhaps best known for its Adopt-An-Olive-Tree program in the Marche region of Italy, and they have now launched some artisanal food sets with authentic flavors from the region. Sometimes food itself is way better than a cookbook. Because who doesn’t like instant gratification that comes from Italia! The Chili Lovers set includes: chili extra virgin olive oil, sweet chili jam, handmade penne, dried Calabrian chilies and a recipe booklet that tell you how to use it all. Grazie!

The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century

This is crazy talk. Ms. Hesser spent six years combing and cooking through The New York Times’s recipe archive – going back more than 150 years. The result is one of the best gifts of the season: over 1,000 recipes that have appeared in the paper, including those of famous cooks like Eric Ripert, Nigella Lawson, Julia Child and Jamie Oliver. It also goes further back to look at selections from chefs of every decade. Each section has a timeline that refers to recipes by the year, so you can fast-track that nostalgic dinner at home. Delish.

Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival Cookbook

Quite possibly the longest name for a cookbook ever, but whatevs. All your favorite Food Network folks are in here: Bobby Flay, Rachel Ray, Tom Colicchio, Paula Deen, etc. Plus a whole lot more. The recipes (printed on very shiny paper) are organized into Drinks, Starters and Small Plates, Barbecue, Burgers, Comfort and Casual Food, Main Courses and Desserts. It’s a bit like a beach party, which is totally fine by us. You can try your hand at Colicchio’s Caramelized Tomato Tarts or Paula Deen’s Double Chocolate Gooey Butter Cake. There are worse things.

French Cooking: Classic Recipes and Techniques

Written by Hubert Delorme and Vincent Boue / Foreword by Paul Bocuse
BOOK
FlammarionAdd to cart

Let’s get one thing straight: If you buy this book, odds are it’s going to become a gift for yourself. If you have restraint and can keep the shrinkwrap on, then perhaps someone on your list has a shot, but we doubt it. Laid out like a textbook, “French Cooking” will demystify the cooking methods French dishes commonly use, that great barrier that stops you in your tracks when you think about making your own croissants. The first half of the book is all about techniques (braising, grilling, steaming, poaching, roasting, etc.) AND there’s a 90-minute DVD to walk you through it. Then the second half has 125 classic recipes (a 2 page grid on flavored butters as well) for you to give it the ol’ college try. Actually, forget everyone else, just buy it for yourself and let your guests try your homemade lemon meringue tartlets when they show up at your door.

Gifts Cooks Love: Recipes for Giving

You can view this as being very ambitious or very frugal – homemade / cooked / baked Holiday treats for your loved ones. Of course if you ask us, we’d much rather spend a day in the kitchen than a day at the mall. And if the practicality doesn’t entice you, perhaps the various nublets within the pages of this cookbook will: Cinnamon-Coated Graham Crackers, Blackberry-Merlot Jellies (sorta like pate de fruit), Boysenberry and Lemon Verbena Jam, Arrabbiata Sauce, Smoky Tomato Ketchup or Backyard BBQ Rub. Mouths will water.

In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite

Ms. Clark, a writer for the New York Times Dining pages, has earned the praise of some of the world’s most celebrated chefs; Tom Colicchio, Mario Batali and Paula Deen are among that talent that has embraced Clark’s work over 29 books. What sets her apart, aside from the American cuisine she concocts for us, is the narrative that she provides in and around a life in the kitchen. There’s a quite a lot to get you into gear in this book: Crème Brûlée French Toast with Orange Blossom Water, Olive Oil-Poached Halibut Nuggets with Garlic and Mint, Roasted Chicken Thighs with Apples, Gin and Coriander Seeds and Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake. Numnumnum.

Nigella Kitchen

We don’t know how the British cooking sensation does it, but Ms. Lawson has churned out another giant cookbook – perhaps her biggest to date at nearly 500 pages. That comes out to 190 recipes and lots of mouth-watering pictures that will get you off your rump and into the kitchen. Things we are excited to try out: Guinness Gingerbread (“definitively unfancy”), Slut’s Spaghetti (her take on pasta alla puttanesca) and Tarragon Chicken, looking very luscious.

Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine

After four years as the World’s Best Restaurant (S. Pellegrino Awards), El Bulli is no longer top of the heap. The new restaurant the world should be salivating over is Noma of Copenhagen. René Redzepi, the 32 year-old behind the establishment (there’s only 12 tables, good luck trying to book one on OpenTable) has just released his cookbook/manifesto on the place. With 200 photos of deconstructed dishes (and, to be frank, lots of pictures of twigs and berries and eggs and such), this book will definitely intrigue you. However, this title should be reserved for the hardcore foodies on your list. Even the recipe for Potato Crisps and Yoghurt calls for liquid nitrogen (“Honey, would you pick up some liquid nitrogen at the grocery? We’re fresh out!”). For the rest of us, it’s certainly a marvel to behold, and may even have us venturing outside our respective boxes.

Sarabeth’s Bakery: From My Hands to Yours

There’s a recipe in here for Chocolate Marmalade Cookies, which may make you completely hysterical. Whether or not you are familiar with the Upper West Side institution that is Sarabeth, this book will make you lose your mind in the best possible way. The sections include: Morning Pastries, Muffins and More, Beautiful Breads, Everyday Cakes, Pies and Tarts and Frostings, Fillings & Sweet Sauces. If the mere idea of the assorted sweetness in here doesn’t get you, the photographs will. The images are so mesmerizing that they might as well be in 3D. We may even be bold and attempt homemade croissants or the Orange Chocolate Chiffon Cake!

Sweet Magic: Easy Recipes for Delectable Desserts

The chef and owner of D.C.’s Michael Richard Citronelle and Central is offering up some amazing sweets in his first cookbook. Among the nublets you’ll find in here: The Ultimate French Toast, Sweet Tomato Basil Tart, Cinnabun (a recipe hailing from Northeast France, not Pillsbury), Extremely Chocolaty Chip Cookies, Baked Doughnuts (the origins of which come from LA – shocker), World’s Flakiest Apple Pie (the effects of using lard without actually using it) and a Happy Birthday Cake that must be taken out of the fridge two hours before serving “otherwise, you will think you are eating a stick of butter.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Tyler Florence Family Meal

Tyler Florence doesn’t have a gimmick or some kind of specialty cuisine to set him apart from a lot of chefs out there. His food is (as described in the press release) “beloved comfort foods with a contemporary twist.” He’s written five other cookbooks, which were beautifully done, but none had the sense of family, character and flavor that this one has. With recipes like: Ultimate Beef Braciola, Buttermilk Biscuits, Pear and Walnut Pie and Meyer Lemon Cupcakes, Florence has put together his best book to date, proving that he’s America’s Friday night and Saturday morning cook.

What to Cook and How to Cook It

With a nod to mid-century tutorial tomes, Hornby’s “What to Cook…” has step-by-step illustrations to layout the process for of cooking for beginners. Most of the recipes in here are pretty meat-and-potatoes: Cheeseburgers, Macaroni & Cheese, Penne with Tomato & Olive Sauce and desserts like Apple Pie and Chocolate Brownies. You won’t find very complicated fare in this book, but it’s a great starter volume for the people in your life whose culinary skills don’t extend far beyond defrosting.